


Lightly Warped Bootleg

by therudestflower



Series: Shift Man Shift [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Epilepsy, Gen, Guilt, Identity, Punk, References to Narcotic Abuse, Shift Man Shift Verse, Tags updated with each chapter, Zines
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-20
Updated: 2012-08-23
Packaged: 2017-11-12 13:22:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/491508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therudestflower/pseuds/therudestflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>B-Side of "Shift Man Shift." Quieter moments, jumbled memories and dropped notes. </p><p>Epileptic Queen: Erica discovers punk music in the form of Fried Laces and zines.<br/>Indirect Amends: Derek needs to fix people. The members of Arsonistical are a good start.<br/>Adoringly Yours: Laura emails Isaac after finding his English textbook in her oven.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Epileptic Queen

Erica finds Fried Laces the week she turns fifteen. The year Dad starts sleeping with the VP with a boob job, and Dr. Priestly finds a medication that doesn’t make Erica’s thoughts fuzzy. Candie emails her an mp3 after Aunt Valere’s birthday party, where Erica told her that she liked Green Day.

_Puta Prima_

_You’re angry enough to like this. Actual dirt, none of that bopper shit._

_Candida (The Boss) Reyes_

The song is called Overbite. She presses play and music breaks through the speakers, making her jump. She quickly turns if off and plugs in headphones. Then listens to the song on repeat for three hours. The girls wail and yell then get utterly silent in the middle. Erica cries every few times. She rips the first pages out of her new journal and transcribes the lyrics.

 

_Prescribe me into margins_

_Break my arms and shoot me up_

_It’s ok that you don’t want me_

_Don’t wait up, I won’t get better_

_Just kill me when it’s convenient_

 

The song destroys and saves Erica.

There’s nothing about Fried Laces online. They have a MySpace page with some songs, and Erica listens to them obsessively. But none of them hit her like Overbite. There are pictures of Latina girls with chopped hair. It says that Anya is the one who writes the songs. There’s a picture of her. She has shaved eyebrows and twisty buns.

She calls Candie and asks if there’s any more music like Fried Laces. Which makes her laugh and call Erica adorable. Candie comes by three days later with an envelope filled with CDs and a stack of booklets. “These are zines. People write shit and do ineterviews, then distribute them to stores and venues and shit. I brought you all the ones that interview Fried Laces, and also the ones about music I think you’d like. You’ll probably like the 90’s riot grrrl stuff, but I also think you’d be into stuff like City Mouse. You don’t have to return any of it, I have tons back at school.”

Erica has no idea what any of what Candie says means, but she takes it all. “Are you sure you don’t want me to return them? I don’t need this stuff.”

Candie hugs her and grips her hair. “You need to be something.”

Erica plays every CD. She uses turns the volume up a little every day, until Mom threatens to throw out her speakers, because she read some article about a study that may be pointing towards loud noises causing seizures. Erica invests in better headphones.

She doesn’t like all the music, but the loud fast sad stuff makes her happy. She devours the zines, even the ones that are just about people’s lives. She takes notes on the six interviews with Fried Laces, most of which are with the drummer, Stacia. They’re all about music, and pot and her pet ferret.

In March gets Stiles to drive her to a comic book store in Rios Valley that supposedly sells zines. Mom’s been freaking out, because she had a seizure two days ago and should be resting. It was at a movie theater and now she’s crying and blaming herself for giving Erica money for tickets. Being around her makes Erica feel like chewing off her arm for thinking she could handle an action movie without spazzing out. She sneaks out of her guilt stained house and meets Stiles at the high school.

He whines all the way to the comic book store. “Why do you have to be into all this weird stuff? There’s a perfectly good bowling alley in Beacon Hills, and we don’t have to drive an hour to get there. They have nachos Erica. _Nachos._ ”

For all his bitching, Stiles insists they stay for an hour until he finds some rare first edition comic. Erica sits on the grimy carpet, reading zines she isn’t going to buy. There’s a short thick one called _Lycanthropy_ about living with illnesses, and Erica is starting to feel a little numb when she turns to the last few pages page. And there is the same MySpace picture of Anya Sanders with the shaved eyebrows. Erica takes deep breaths as she reads about how she had a tumor on her neck and went through chemo for most of high school.

“ **Anya:** Sometimes it felt like people were just waiting for me to die. I was killing my family every time a cell divided. They couldn’t breathe until I got better.”

Guilt turns in her stomach, at the thought of Anya having cancer, at the thought of Mom at home worried about where her daughter is. She thinks of Overbite.

_Just kill me when it’s convenient_

The guilt curdles. It’s not fucking _fair_. It’s not fair that Erica is the one with epilepsy, but Mom acts like it belongs to her. It’s Erica’s. Even if it’s the worst thing about her life, no one should be able to take it from her. Why does she have to live in her mother’s margins like some broken bird? She gets to be something.

Stiles comes over to where she’s sitting with a crinkled bag of comics in his hand. “You ready to go?” She looks at him. Stiles has a life. He has archery club. She just goes home. She deserves something.

“I’m in a band.”

Stiles snorts. “No you are not. You clearly are not. Come on, I’m sick of waiting.”

Erica leaves the zines on the floor and follows him out. There’s a leather shop next to Robix Comixs, and a concert place across the street. She could be part of this world, flashing lights not included. This could be hers.

“I sure as fuck am.”

Soon is close enough to the truth. She deserves to be something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fried Laces is not a real band, and Lycanthropy is not a real zine. Well there probably is a zine called Lycanthropy, but not this exact one.


	2. Indirect Amends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

His sponsor says that making amends is one thing, but centering his life around it is just another addiction.

Chris plays the “I’ve been there” card, but it his addiction was benign. Making amends took Chris two months. He cheated on his wife, so he bought her flowers. Derek burned down half his mother’s house. Chris’s daughter broke her arm while he was stoned, so he pays for her therapy. Derek left a girl he knew was OD’ing because something better was happening in the next room. Chris used his father’s pain killers and hurt grampy’s feelings. Derek took Mr. Lahey’s Percocet and ran—he didn’t even care what happened to Camden because of it.

Chris was able to make amends because there was something left.  Derek destroyed everything he touched. He couldn’t rebuild Mom’s house or apologize, not with the restraining order. The girl—Kayleen—was long gone, but not dead. She disappeared while Derek was in rehab and no one knew where she went. He had no way to find her and say he was sorry for abandoning her. Camden, his best friend, had shot himself in his father’s basement. Two weeks after Derek left him to take the beating. Direct amends are impossible.

Arsonistical is his indirect amend, his chance to fix people instead of break them. Camden would have kicked the shit out of him. It is one thing to watch out for Isaac, but forming a band with him and a nest of prepubescent children is just creepy. Derek is highly aware of how fucked up it seems. New guys on the scene called him a pervert, and the blanket opinion is that Derek Hale is such a bad guitar player that only children will play with him. But it’s worth it.

He’s going to give Boyd a place to start. He’s talented, but the Lincoln Wood scene is fucked up place. They’d rather have a talentless skinny white kid who looks the part. Derek figures even if the rest of them are shit, Boyd will stand out as the talent. Play a few more gigs and people will notice him. He’ll be able to leave Arsonistical and do a band his way. With fiddles and all that Irish shit he is into. Derek can do that for him.

Erica was going to be eaten alive if someone didn’t grab her. He found her at a Spitwad show, nearly trampled and hyperventilating. He grabbed her and dragged her out, ignoring the glares and knowledge that he looked like a predator. She looked like Kayleen. They went to a convenience store, where she proceeded to knock over a postcard rack and get them kicked out. They sat on the curb and he listened to her chatter about her cousin, Fried Laces and how she deserved to be good at something. She thought she could be good at singing. So he offered her a band.

Isaac is most important. Derek got out of rehab the week after his fourteenth birthday. He brought Isaac a pair of noise cancelling headphones, then drove him to the Sheriff’s station. Getting him out that house was the easiest part. Sober, could see Isaac for the first time. A kid who barely talked and used the inside of his arms as a scratching post. Camden was gone. Derek didn’t even reach for him, but he can fix his brother. He gives him the drums, and a key to his apartment. It's a start. 

If Derek fixes enough people, he will be worth forgiving. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In canon, Derek is an imperfect alpha. He is interested in helping the pups, but has an eye on another prize. I wanted to translate that into punker Derek. Though I believe his intentions here are far less selfish--it's not quite selfless and more than a bit misguided. 
> 
> But he's trying.


End file.
